Board suggestion.

[fern*wood]

Why not make all threads of a certain age read only, rather than allowing newish posters to post their issues on one only to see it get shut down?   Many do not realize they need to start a new thread, and may never return after seeing the one they post on get shut down.

[silverstatetreasureboxes]

@fern*wood 

Good idea as something needs to be done. It's amazing to me that newbies can search and pull up an old post from 2021 yet cannot navigate the ebay app.

[frankenhobbit]

It's probably Google that points them to the thread. They ask a question there and it leads to directly to an ancient thread. They probably just don't think to look at the date of the post. Google is how I initially found this forum and I had been on ebay about 14 years before I found it. 

[nenu-5410]

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@fern*wood wrote:

Why not make all threads of a certain age read only, rather than allowing newish posters to post their issues on one only to see it get shut down?   Many do not realize they need to start a new thread, and may never return after seeing the one they post on get shut down. 

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Hi rebecca@ebay, 

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alan@ebay wrote on Jan 13, 2017 in this post:

Meanwhile, in the backend, we've started work on bulk locking and archiving old threads. We'll continue to do this regularly on all boards as part of our maintenance of the Community.

Thanks. 

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Is this still being done?

[maxine*j]

People get a mixed message: 

On the one hand, they're told* to see if their questions / comments have already been answered / responded to on one of the boards. 

On the other hand, if they post to the previous threads they find, the threads get locked due to age and they're told to "start a new thread..."

So it's really something like:  Find a previous thread on the subject but make sure it's not too old.  But how old is too old?  

I think newcomers must be frustrated.  Maybe making threads Read-Only at some fixed age is a good idea, though.  Six  months?  Four?  Three?  I don't know.

*Community Guidelines says:  "If you are new to selling on eBay use the Search feature (All content Search bar at top of any page in Community) to search for a topic and read how other sellers approach the issue..."

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[gloryglorygifts]

Personally, I think some of those old threads need to be purged. Quite a few things have been instituted since some of them were started, EIS and MP come to mind, and the old threads no longer apply. Return policies and refunds have changed too in the relatively short time that I've been here. How many threads of why are people not leaving feedback and why are my sales tanking do we have to look through? 

I also think that when you subscribe to a post you should be notified in the eBay messaging and not your email account, but that's just me. 

[inhawaii]

Great idea.  😃

[inhawaii]

Old posts should be there for people to research, but "read only" and not be able to reply to.

[mtgraves7984]

Google is how I initially found this forum and I had been on ebay about 14 years before I found it. 

@frankenhobbit 

Hah! I thought it was just me. Selling since 2007, accidently found the board in 2015. Glad to be here, though! 😁

[ckimodog]

@fern*wood 

Absolutely agree! Piggy backing on someone else's thread is somewhat futile, especially if the mods shut it down.  They can get more help by starting a new one.  Good post.